Kosterlitz–Thouless Transition

Three days ago, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University:

David Thouless of the University of Washington:

and Duncan Haldane of Princeton University:

They won it for their “theoretical discovery of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”, which was later confirmed by many experiments.

Sadly, the world’s reaction was aptly summarized by Wired magazine’s headline:

Nobel Prize in Physics Goes to Another Weird Thing Nobod...